e2retrieve

e2retrieve is a data recovery tool for Ext2 filesystem.
This means that e2retrieve will not try to repair the filesystem but will extract
data to "copy" it to another place (another disk, NFS, Samba, ...).

e2retrieve:

can recover data from a truncated or split ext2 filesystem (in the case of a LVM with a disk that has crashed, for example),

will not write onto the ext2 filesystem it is analysing, therefore it will never increase damages previously caused,

can easily fit in a rescue floppy disk (in the case where you do not have enough IDEslots),

is not an undeleting tool

It started as a challenge after crash disk in a LVM (and that disk represented the first 10GB of the LVM, e.g. the first 10GB of the filesystem...), and because I wasn‘t able to find such a tool (now, it seems that e2extract does something similar), and e2salvage didn‘t do what I expected.

e2retrieve shouldn‘t be useful for those who are working in enterprise because they do backups (or they should do), but when when you are at home you can‘t pay for a full backup of 120GB, for example; but this doesn‘t meen you have to loose all of your data...

Download

This version must considered alpha because even if it worked for me, I tweaked some internal algorithms for my needs, so some of these things can still be present. Plus, I‘m not very confident with the scanning process.
If you play a bit with e2retrieve and that you see something weird, I encourage you to send me a mail. You can even send me raw data or image file you played with by FTP (through my ADSL line...).

If you expect to recover data on a LVM, this version require a 2.4.x kernel with the LVM2 patch. I‘m working on a version compatible with 2.4.x, 2.6.x and myrescue (or incorporating myrescue)

NEW: this is a new version of e2retrieve_rescuedisk that should compile better (tested on Slackware 9.0, Suse 8.2 and Redhat 6.2 with GCC version 2.96, 3.2 & 3.3).

The following archive (e2retrieve_rescuedisk.tar.gz36MB) will help you in creating a floppy bootable disk to recover your files. The bootable floppy disk will contain (after compiling and/or tweaking):

The archive is very big because it contains all sources. It comes with a Makefile that will assist you in compiling. The archive do not contain e2retrieve, so you must download it and put it in the good directory (see README file). All is x86 oriented, but you can adapt it easily to be build for another architecture.

Links

Through the following links, you may find something that better fits your needs, gives better results or help going :